Customers of the Virtual Private network provider "PureVPN" over the weekend started receiving a fake email claiming to be from the founder saying that "due to an incident we had to close your account permanently".

"We are no longer able to run an anonymization service due to legal issues we are facing" The fake email reads.

"We had to handover all customer’s information to the authorities unfortunately. They might contact you if they need any details about the case they are working on. The following information was handed over: your name, billing address and phone number provided during purchase and any documents we had on file (for example scan of your ID or driver’s license if you have provided these to our billing department)."

However, the Co-founder ,Uzair Gadit, said in the official blog post that the email is fake and confirmed the purevpn website hit by a security breach.

Hackers exploited a vulnerability in 3rd party application WHMCS and compromised the email IDs and names of registered users.

"We repeat no billing information such as Credit Card or other sensitive personal information was compromised." The blog post reads.